What is Elevated Third?

Elevated Third’s namesake is rooted in company culture. It comes from the art world and refers to the experience one has when looking at a particularly moving or captivating piece of art. When you have a “get it” moment—that flash of understanding—an elevated third experience is created between the medium and you, the viewer.

At Elevated Third, a Denver website agency focusing on Drupal, we strive to replicate this experience for our clients, our partners, and our employees.

Our Culture

Our culture and work ethic is based on an idea that the right environment can foster incredible talent. We don’t exclusively hire people who fit a job description, instead we hire people who are smart enough to grow into their own description. We choose employees based on their aptitude to overachieve. Then, we observe. We figure out what said employee is particularly good at and we create a job description around their strengths.

This practice is easier said than done. It requires a scaffolding of actionable core values and exceptional hires who allow their peers to be vulnerable. Because, of course, learning means making mistakes.

Ultimately, it is an environment of support, vulnerability, and observation that allows us to foster talent instead of hire it based on a list of requirements and a resume. The results: employees who feel important, who produce great work, and who are happy to work hard.

On top of all the standard agency perks like snacks and foosball, our new core values are essential to establishing and maintaining our internal culture here at Elevated Third. They are the guidelines for personal success. Following them is the best way to be successful at our Denver website agency. When our employees are successful, the company will prosper. Establishing the core values in late 2016 has had a direct impact on the business success we have seen thus far in 2017.

Core Values

When we first got together to determine our core values, we knew it was not going to be a simple process. We had to get it right, and we had to take the time to carefully craft each value.

We started by listing attributes that we believe make our employees successful. Things like accountability, effectiveness, work ethic, engagement, curiosity, positive energy, empathy, confidence, and thoughtfulness to name just a small sampling. For the next few months, we boiled down our list and crafted them into similar groupings. From these groups, the five values that we have now started to make themselves clear. It was a long, sometimes tedious, yet fulfilling experience.

Lean in and keep moving. Stay engaged, positive and persistent. Bring energy and never quit.

Make an impact. Seek out and solve the right problems. Be fearless! Fight for the win-win.

Be a remarkable player. Put the team first. Step up when it’s time, inspire by example.

Own the outcome. Take responsibility for results. Embrace data, celebrate effectiveness and face failures. Never stop improving.

The core values we have put in place guide all the decisions we make within our Denver website agency. They help inform everything from questions in an interview process, project decision making, peer to peer feedback, internal growth strategy, and long-term client relationships. Every single aspect of the business can be applied to the five core values. Since implementing them we are seen our decision-making process become much more focused, both short term and especially long term.

We’ve made an initiative out of preventing the typical cliched core value design. Figuring out creative ways to implement them into our everyday process has become a necessary challenge. We specifically seek out the traits that the values exemplify in our hiring process. In addition, all new hires see the exact debut presentation our company founders shared during the core values unveiling meeting.

Our core values are meant to stand against the core value bandwagoners, they run through our day-to-day, our hiring, and our attitudes.

Each and every day, we’re seeking the elevated third experience.

News & Insights

Customer experience. Data-driven marketing. Unified customer data. Digital transformation. You’ve heard the buzzwords and have a laundry list of things you’re not doing—or struggling to do—with an older version of